In a moment of panic and completely impulsiveness, I flooded the tank and planted it tonight. When I got home today the yogurt had developed a lot of white spiky mold. I even noticed a little on the substrate near the lower mossy areas. After tomorrow, I'll be away from my tank for 4 days, so I got super nervous that mold could take over the tank and kill all of my work.

I grabbed one of my test pieces of wood and ran it under the faucet. To my surprise, the mold was hanging on. Long term? Who knows? I am comfortable leaving it for 4 days with CO2 and a filter, so I figured what the heck, lets go for it.

I slowly flooded the tank, and only a little bit of the moss has lifted. Most of it is stahing put so far. All of the UG stayed happily planted. This is not 100% of my plants, but it's most of them other than a bunch of rotola. It's possible that I'll come home and the rest of the moss will be floating around the tank, but I really hope not.

I apologize ahead of time for the darkness of the pics. I'm tired, so I just grabbed the camera and took the shots, not realizing I had it set to under expose by a bit for an earlier shot. The water is also a bit cloudy.

KenRC51 is right, it's a Fluval 306. The ugly Fluval hoses will be replaced with glass lily pipes and clear hose when those show up. I wasn't expecting to flood it yet and figured they'd be here for the "grand opening" ceremony.

Well I woke up this morning and everything is still where I left it. We will see how it looks several days from now, but I'm cautiously optimistic. I have a neighbor stopping by to dose the tank with ferts for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KenRC51

Looking nice!! I would bump the co2 for the UG to prevent less melting.

Thanks! There are no critters in the tank, so the CO2 is being blasted. I basically doubled the bubble count that I was running on my 12 gallon. I'll measure CO2 when I get home after work today.

I'm glad I had made a layout ahead of time for where I wanted all the plants. It helped me plant everything relatively quickly since I had a map. I'm also happy with how it looks for now. I can't wait for it to fill out. Aside from some more anubias to help fill in by the base of the branch, I'd also like some other plants there. I haven't settled on what yet. Any suggestions?

Here are two more pictures with clearer water and proper exposure:

Also, here is a picture of the mold that was showing up all over the yogurt, and it was starting to spread to the substrate in the lower areas:

How many bps are you putting out with the reactor? I heard that with a reactor it can help with diffusing the co2 to the water better than diffuser leading to less co2 need.

I'm way overshooting right now because I don't have time to dial it in. I'm going out of town for a few days and don't want to worry about it, and there are no fish to hurt. I'm not sure how BPS relates from one to the other, because diffusers are under much higher pressure. When I hooked up the reactor the BPS changed without adjusting the needle valve because of the pressure difference. Does one bubble of CO2 under 30psi have the same amount of CO2 as a bubble generated under very little PSI? I don't know.

Hmmmm... checking CO2 level... I just checked and my KH is 8 and my PH is 6.4, so I'm at about 94ppm CO2 according to the chart.

I can probably dial it back a little.

I went with the reactor because I was tired of all the bubbles, more gear in the tank, and having to clean the stupid ceramic things every so often.

Beautiful tank! Once it grows in it will look amazing! Great pictures as well!

So why did you put yogurt down for the moss? Was it just to keep the moss stuck there? I've never seen this done so I'm rather curious.

Thanks!

As for the moss/yogurt thing, it's a method used to get moss to grow on stuff emmersed. Google moss graffiti, and you'll can see pics and read about the method. Basically blending moss and yogurt and then painting it on things. I'm guessing the yogurt supplies moisture and nutrients to the moss, but who knows. The member mot used this method for his amazing moss canyon tank, which is where I got the idea.

If it's still there when I get back on Sunday, I'll call it a success.

yogurt for moss is to promote growth from what is read on the internet. Blender method I personally blended mine without any additives (just water) which didn't make a paste. But I accidentally left the rock out in the sun and killed my moss attempt.

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